The team warmed up. They started to look less and less like corpses now, and siheir clothes and armor were not wet, they were able to recover quickly. In a timespan of half an hour, they were their normal selves again.

  Ortana seemed to have fotten most of what happehe cold really messed with her good from the looks of it, but she did remember something very specific. It was about Timothy.

  “You tried to ditch us!” She yelled out, and smacked him upside the head. “You treacherous bastard… you almost had me killed when I ditched you ba the day!”

  “The past is behind us, let's look towards the future.” Tim joked, as he didn’t think much of her judgy attitude.

  Everyone was frankly happy to be alive, but their worries hadn't bee any smaller, as they were still trapped here. They'd rather find a way out of here instead of wasting time bickering, because it washer normal or safe to be between such great walls of ice for long. They had to move.

  Timothy only had a couple of options when it came to digging himself out of trouble. He would either ask the system for help, or develop an idea himself, though the tter is oftentimes more troublesome, so for that matter he decided to talk to the system instead.

  He asked, “What you give me, system? I think I'm ready to look at that new badge of upgrades you kept talking about, so, you give me something that’ll help us cut through the ice without crushing us to death? I'd really appreciate it.”

  [I don't have anything like that in particur, that's a very strange request. Besides, you only have eighteen-hundred system points right now, so you 't buy anything important.] She answered.

  “What! Oeen? That doesn't sound right.” He bickered.

  [You had spent a lot of system points on the pre-neantic upgrades, the ohat you've been using today. They were expensive, but also, you only mao kill a single creature in this universe, it being a Whistling Mana-muncher Eel - You didn't kill anything else after that.] She pointed out.

  With that said, Tim realized that the system was absolutely right. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he hadn't been on the hunt for system points all that much throughout these past couple of months, no, he had only cared about mana, and mana quality!

  The tter was a blessing and a curse, because although his mana quality was good now, better than it had ever been before, his hyperfocus oter, has stripped other options away from him. He couldn’t buy new abilities, he simply couldn’t get his hands on those, and it was frustrating.

  To fort himself, he thought. “Well, at least every magical ability I have, upgraded along with my mana quality. I probably saved a lot of system points that way, maybe thousands!”

  Timothy was a bit optimistic, but ultimately, he had strayed off-topic by a lot, even though he had just been talking to himself so far. It was difficult to keep a straight train of thoughts right now.

  In the meantime, Arvena was looking around, as she was more dedicated to get out of here. Since she had warmed the team up enough, she was now free to explore their surroundings, and did exactly that. She hoped to find a point, whi hindsight was too much to ask for from a literal byrinth of icy walls, but she tried to find it heless!

  Twenty meters away from where she started, she discovered three new pathways to follow. She figured that two of them would lead to dead ends, so she was hoping to find that oh that would help them progress, and then lead everyohrough it. She was hopeful, but also distracted, so she had ignored what was in front of her almost entirely!

  When she did eventually look up, she noticed a full, fged dragon trapped is scales were dark-red. This dragon didn't seem out of pce at first, but then, she saw it blink!

  Arvena did not want to battle a dragon, so almost instinctively, she turned back, and ran towards the group! There, she almost smacked Skendus behind the head.

  “You told me they were all dead!” She yelled, with her to of order, and her in panic.

  “Their brains are dead, the brains of the dragons that I see, at least.” He followed along, but he was a lot calmer in parison. “What happened?”

  “One of them bli me,” She answered truthfully.

  “You seem awfully scared ons,” Ortana pointed out.

  “A fire breathing dragon that's trapped with us, below all of this ice, is not our friend, Ortana. One wrong blow, and we're all dead, so it doesn't matter if we could kill it or not!” She bit back.

  While the two of them were arguing, Skendus had slipped away from the group, and headed towards the dire of the ‘blinking dragon’. He was a big guy, but he had mao sneak away heless, because his steps were delicate when his natural curiosity was at stake!

  The trapped dragon was just twenty meters away, so it didn't take long to find it. He was very happy to find something alive around here, because it could help him figure out just how all of this ice that was full of carcasses, popped up around them in the first pce!

  Skendus found the dragon, and then started rag through its brain. He searched for coherent, expnatory thoughts within its brain, but was fresh out of lu that matter, because this dragon didn't seem sht.

  However, it was alive, and its brain was mostly healthy, so it meant that this dragon had been trapped here only retly. His guess was that it had randomly flown into that prior blizzard, and had gotten ensnared by the crippling cold temperatures as well!

  “Pretty calm for a dragon… maybe it's calm because it's trapped in the ice?” He thought to himself.

  Skendus was absolutely right, the ice was doing its part. It wasn't just calming the dragon down, but it was killing it as well, aiced this moments ter, when he picked up on its gradual dee of brain activity. The dragon was dying!

  “If a fire breather 't withstand the cold, then what ce do we have? We're gonrapped in ie way or the other, and then we'll be perfectly preserved examples as to why no one should mess with this damned forest. We don't stand a ce!” He thought.

  With all of that sidered, he started getting really desperate, so he called Arvena over, and pitched ao her. One where they would free this dragon, and naturally, she was not on board with it!

  “Are you crazy? As soon as we set it free, it will start bsting! We'll all have ice blocks through our heads in a matter of seds!” She argued, and it was a pelling argument, but Skendus had a better one.

  “A fire breathing dragon e in handy, we're trapped in ice, and so is he, he'll reize the patterns here and cooperate. Besides, it has one of the calmest brains that I've ever read through, calmer than Tim's, that's for sure.” He joked.

  “Okay… let's melt our funeral out of the ice then.” She sighed.

  Afterwards, she summohese multiple, dagger like bits of fire on her palms, and started cutting through the ice with them. The cuts were elegant and precise, to the point where she didn't even allow a freckle of ice to get out of order, she melted through those freckles effitly.

  The dragon seemed to notice what she was doing, so it tilted its head a little bit. This freaked everyo, because a dragon that was trapped on ice, shouldn't be able to move at all, everyone in the group almost shat themselves in response!

  However, when a tiny stream of water suddenly spttered out of one of the cuts, the cuts on the ice that Arvena had made, they started uanding what was happening. The dragon had tried to free itself before, and when it noticed that the melted ice could make it drown and also shiver, it had stopped blowing fire against the ice. It had stopped trying to survive, and gave up.

  With that said, this dragon may not be so stupid after all, he at least embraced realism. In a sense, Arve a bit more fortable about helping it now, because she was vihat the dragon was capable enough to uand passion, and loyalty! trary to what she was worried about before, the dragon may not freak out after all.